


everything stays

by TrekFaerie



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Dreams vs. Reality, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Metaphysical Sex, Muteness, Other, Religious Guilt, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 05:44:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19739473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrekFaerie/pseuds/TrekFaerie
Summary: A field of flowers.A glass of wine.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> you clicked the link. you looked at the tags. you are here because you chose to be here. we are here together in this now.
> 
> aziraphale and crowley behold the glory of god in separate ways. far be it for me, a mere mortal to even attempt to transcribe Her holy form... but, if we all rightfully assume god looks a great bit like frances mcdormand, then aziraphale would be seeing her in blood simple, while crowley would be seeing her in olive kitteridge.

Aziraphale woke to the overwhelming scent of lilies, of orange blossom and cedar wood. _A garden_ , he thought at first, almost delirious, but it was not a garden. Gardens were planted, planned, designed; he was something of an expert in gardens, he thought, and this wasn’t one. It was a field, wild and breathtaking, and stretching off into the endless horizon, far beyond him, farther than he could see.

Seeing no other obvious option, he decided to get up and walk, for as long as he needed to walk. If he was meant to notice that he was dressed much like he had in a certain garden long ago, he didn’t.

He walked until he came upon a girl on a hillside. The girl was fast asleep, cradled gently in the flowers, wearing a robe of an impossibly splendored white. The fragrant breeze did not stir the girl, nor did the far-off chirrup of birds, the cooing of doves.

“My God,” he whispered, falling to his knees in the columbines, for it was Her, and to look upon Her filled his heart with love, love he hadn’t felt since that day in Tadfield, the all-encompassing love of a being so far beyond him.

Her eyes opened. They were the stars in the night sky; they were the pinks and reds of dawn and dusk, the bluest spring day and the greyest winter morning. White apple blossoms dotted Her curls like constellations, and She brushed them away. A few stray blossoms found themselves carried in the breeze and tangled in Aziraphale’s own hair, and he felt a hand dust them loose – and in an overwhelming upswell of emotion, he grasped Her hand and brought it to his lips, pressing frentic kisses to Her knuckles.

“My God, My Lord, My Merciful, Gracious, Compassionate Mother of All…”

God sat next to him in the flowers, Her hand firmly grasping his own, Her face Everything and Her presence Multitudes. It was difficult to look upon Her for very long, and every time he did, his eyes swelled with tears. Holy fingers wiped them; holy lips kissed them. 

He let out a long, shaky breath. “I tried to get through to You, My Lord,” he said. She gave no true reaction, only continuing to grace him with Her beatific beauty. “I tried, right before it all happened… No one would listen. No one would let me _get_ anyone to listen.

“I’ve always felt… always _believed_ , rather, that if I had only gotten through to You… Oh, I have to believe it would have changed everything. Why would You ever want to destroy Your most beautiful creation? And humans really are just the most wonderful… Have You ever been amongst Your creations, My Lord? If You could only see them, truly _see_ them… Oh, and Adam – he is a wonderful boy, a truly _human_ boy! I see in him what You must have seen in his father, before the Fall… Does that make sense? I do hope I’m making sense. Look at me, dithering, in front of… Oh, Crowley would never let me hear the end of this, if he knew!”

The name, slipped out so thoughtlessly, visibly piqued Her interest; She leaned forward, Her grip on his hand tightening slightly. “Ah… Of course You’re aware. Omnipotence. You know all… Then, You must know how he truly is! There is no one, on Heaven or Earth, My Lord, who loves Your creation as much as he does! Simply no one! He’s… Oh. I don’t know where any of this would be without him.”

He gestured to the field around them, the flowers and the trees and the animals. “All of this, Your most precious works, would have burned for their war,” he said. “Burned for their vengeance. Their wrath. Their… boredom. That’s all it was. They just wanted to destroy everything for the mere moments of pleasure it would bring them. All of them.”

He gave Her a small smile, the glory of Her being making the membranes over his eyes burn slightly. “I do hope You would agree with this, My Lord,” he said. “I think both sides could learn a thing or two from Your endless grace and forgiveness. Remember that, in Your most wondrous design, You sent Your own beloved son to suffer and redeem the very world they’re so desperate to end.”

The world suddenly changed angle, and he found himself pulled down onto the flowers by God Herself, Her hands clasping the front of his shift like lapels. Her lips tasted of sacraments, sweetened with the honeyed perfume of all Her flowers. The skin that met Hers felt as if it had been scoured, been shined to perfect newness by the power of Her spirit.

He felt Her all around him. Her being traced the whorls of his brain and the ventricles of his heart. Her glory permeated every crack and crevice in his skin, burrowing into his existence in every possible way. And all it took were Her lips pressed against his own, Her hands tracing ancient psalms into his skin.

“I knew war wasn’t in the Ineffable Plan,” he said, speaking more to himself – though, he had been doing that the entire time. “We – all of us – whether celestial or human, all of us, we are beings of _love_! You cannot love ashes.”

Boldness went through him, and he pressed back into the kiss for the first time, Her lips soft as cumulus and warm as the sun. “You cannot love ashes and be loved in return.”

Every fiber of his being, from his corporeal body to his immortal soul, felt full to bursting with holy light, heavy with Her grace and divinity. And then, it did burst: shook him down at the very core of his creation, seemed to rattle his body and the field and the very nature of reality itself, his vision blinded by glorious fire that his eyes could not see. The scent of lilies lingered long after he left that realm behind.


	2. Chapter 2

It was darker than it was supposed to be, he thought. It had been day when he had walked the halls of the inn, buying up every open room in Bethlehem in preparation, wondering what the angel’s plan with those shepherds was going to end up being. By nightfall, they had already joined back up; he had never been at the inn at night. That was his first clue that he was dreaming.

The lack of people was another clue, but a strange one; Crowley’s dreams were usually densely populated, with the millions upon millions of human faces he had come across in his thousands of years upon the Earth. He had never dreamt of the inn. He had never dreamt of solitude.

There was a woman in the courtyard. An older woman, in a gray simlāh and mițpaḥațh, sat on an animal skin and pouring wine from a skin into two clay cups. He looked Her over – he knew who She was. What She was. Rage bubbled up behind his lips, but it only came out as a laugh, bitter and tired.

“How dare you come to me now.” She didn’t seem to take any notice of him. She merely finished pouring the wine, bringing Her cup to her lips. “What gives you the right? After all this time… After all you’ve done… How dare you come into the only place I can forget you?”

He slapped the cup from Her hand; wine soaked into the thirsty desert sand. Eyes like the edge of forever stared up at him guilelessly, and even looking upon them made his spine feel like it was being ripped, vertebrae by vertebrae, out of his back.

“I never dreamt before I Fell. Nobody in your blasted _glory_ needs dreams!” The other cup sat nestled in the mane of the skinned lion, and he scooped it up, drinking it down in one gulp. It tasted thin and bitter, like he remembered cheap wine tasting back then. “You weren’t there, the first night. They both had nightmares. Eve dreamed of beasts tearing into her belly, stealing her child. That’s what it feels like. What it felt like. Damn. Damn you.”

She gestured to the space beside Her, and, damn _him_ , he sat. She looked… God. How could you describe Her? To see Her was to know Her, and he had never known Her, not really. Had he ever even gazed upon Her, before the Fall burned all he was from him, like bleach on a stain?

Fingertips ghosted over his cheek; She was touching him, for some reason, and he hadn’t even realized any tears had been shed until Her fingers came back wet.

“I shouldn’t expect answers from you. I never should have. If you never wanted your creations to talk back to you, you shouldn’t have made them with mouths.” A wet hand pushed, feather-soft, on his chest, and he felt his head bounce against the fur. “But, we’d just sign our questions with our hands, wouldn’t we? Take our hands, and we’ll use our feet. Take those, and we’ll draw our curiosity in the dirt. That’s how you bloody well made us, Lord. Take some responsibility for what you’ve done, for the first time in all of Creation.”

Her dress settled over him, Her hands framing his face as She stared at him, wordless, voiceless, meaningless. “’Ineffable.’ That’s the word he uses to describe your plan – but, it’s just a good word for you in general, isn’t it? How are creatures like us ever meant to understand something like you? We can’t even know what you really are. Or if you are even anything at all.”

She kissed him. The wine was so sour. She kissed him like windfall of crabapples. She peppered kisses like a scourge on his jawbone, his nose, his forehead.

“I wanted to know why you cast me out, just for asking questions,” he said. “I wanted to know why I displeased… For such a long time, I just wanted to take it back. I wanted to take back whatever I’d… whatever had hurt You so much, Lord, that You couldn’t bear to have me.”

He wrapped his arms around Her, pulled Her close on top of him, felt the warmth of Her flesh and the sweetness of roses in Her hair.

“How can I ask You for Your forgiveness when You aren’t the one to give it,” he said. 

He moved with Her, in Her, and within Her he felt the grace, the light, the glory.

“I am.”

-

There was sun peeking through the curtains, small pillars of light aimed directly into Crowley’s eyes. How long had they been asleep? Hours? Days? Weeks? He hoped it wasn’t years; they had mortal obligations now, mortals they had obligations to, and humans were so very limited in their amount of years.

He turned over. “Angel…”

Aziraphale was cocooned up in Crowley’s duvet, his hair spread out on Crowley’s pillow like gold seams in concrete. There were dried tear tracks on his cheeks, which initially concerned him – but, he was smiling, wasn’t he? Dreams could be a bit of a mixed bag, sometimes. Best not to wake him, let whatever was playing out in his mind take its course.

He set his head back down on the pillow. After all, he thought, the only good part of waking up early was getting to watch the other person dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is it a dream. is it a vision. is it a communion with an almighty power that just happens to look suspiciously like making out.
> 
> ours is not to question why


End file.
